Weed Killers

Cannabis has no lethal dose, and its pharmacological effects have never
caused a single death in over 5,000 years of recorded history. The (unseen)
driving force against medical (or unrestricted adult) legalization of
cannabis ("Grass Roots," March 27) is the fact that cannabis can't be
patented. This precludes the need for big business to be involved, and that
fact makes cannabis commercially unattractive to the pharmaceutical,
tobacco, and alcohol industries (lobbies). If it can't be made profitable
successfully, the government can't justify legalization, even for the sick
and dying.

Furthermore, the war on cannabis drives the war on drugs. Without cannabis
prohibition, the drug war would be reduced to a pillow fight. This is the
politics and the economics of cannabis prohibition.

Maybe the corrupt politicians and media are required to adhere to the party
line of cannabis prohibition because law enforcement, customs, the prison-
and military-industrial complex, the drug-testing industry, the "drug
treatment" industry, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the CIA,
the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the politicians themselves,
et al. can't live without the budget justification, not to mention the
invisible profits, bribery, corruption, and forfeiture benefits that
prohibition affords them. The drug war also promotes, justifies, and
perpetuates racist enforcement policies, and is diminishing many freedoms
and liberties that are supposed to be inalienable according to the
Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Myron Von Hollingsworth

Fort Worth, Texas